How can we live in peace with anyone if we believe they are the key to our happiness? We will say and do all sorts of things to get what we believe we need – and at some point, in some way they will resist our pushing.

This push and resist approach to relationships and life is futile. We can’t manipulate, control or resist our way into peace and happiness.

But what a difference when we pause and discover that peace is actually ever present and uncaused by anything at all.

What freedom it is to be totally free from the belief that others and life now need to be a certain way for us to know peace and happiness.

Sometimes my daughter asks me for advice about practical matters and I often find myself saying something like, “Do what feels most joyful – don’t follow fear.” When we catch on to the mechanism of fear it loses its pull and moving from and in joy begins to have an ease about it. But this joy only reveals itself when we are now empty of conditioning. Conditioning is past programming which views life now in a fragmented, scary way. When believed, this programming runs rampant creating all kinds of fears and strange movements.But when we perceive directly, freshly, unfiltered ----is there now really anything to fear?

It is all very simple.Instead of seeing things imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face." Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."